Week of July 21

Ok obviously I've been slacking on this whole blog thing.  Although the thing is, I have been keeping up with it, but I usually write it when I'm taking a break from being on my feet. Then there are pictures that I've wanted to add but that requires me to get up off the couch and I think to myself "eh, I'll do it later.  What's another day?"  Instead of giving you a really long post that takes awhile to load (at least on my computer it does), I'm posting 3 different posts this week.  If you want to go back and read through them, knock yourself out.  If not, well, the sole purpose of this blog isn't for others' entertainment anyway.  :-) 

Week 36 - Baby is head down and giving me quite the constant tummy ache.  Other than that, he likes to flip from side to side and stick his little butt up. 

Sunday
Sunday afternoons are for napping.  After not getting one for the past two weeks (for good reasons, I'm not complaining) it was nice to get back into my Sunday routine.

Monday
Caleb's sister, Christa, and her boys decided to come for a visit and then we got a call a little bit later that Caleb's parents were also coming to visit.  Christa helped me go through some of my baby clothes and get them ready to be washed.  Later that afternoon we all headed to Columbia to do some shopping.  I finally got to go to a fabric store like I've been wanting to do for a little while, although I didn't get everything I was looking for.  I'm all about bargains and have a hard time paying full price for things, and their sales weren't real great this week.

Tuesday
We had our baby doctor appointment, and she told me that the baby was head down with his head very low (I could have told her that) and I am 50% thinned out and 3 cm dialated!  Once I hit 37 weeks if I go into labor, they won't stop my labor.  Just a few more days!  That really got my rear in gear to try to get everything ready for the baby, just in case.  Although I'm sure the faster I get everything done, the slower he'll take coming into this world. If I'm ready now, he'll wait until 41 weeks or if I procrastinate now then he'll come early.  That's usually how things work in my life.

Caleb and I headed to Target after the appointment (Target two days in a row, talk about spoiled!) and got several things that we still need for the baby.  Shopping is always more fun when you have coupons and gift cards.  :-)  My credit card didn't even have to see the light of day. 

Wednesday
Even though I was exhausted from walking so much the past couple of days, Caleb and I walked to the post office to get a box that they were holding for us.  I ordered a few things from amazon and I forgot to change the shipping address on my account so the box got shipped to New Albany.  I should have learned my lesson the last time we moved and I did the exact same thing.  Fortunately our forwarding address was put on the box, but it still took a long time to get it because it got shipped back to New Albany again, then on to Centralia.  Since our forwarding address is to the church (because we didn't have a place to live when we moved), we have to go pick up packages at the post office.  The box was not taped at all and was hanging open, and one of the items was missing.   Since we had some gift cards from swagbucks and rewards from my amazon credit card thanks to lovely medical bills, I had ordered a Wheel of Fortune wii game, Harry Potter #5 (which completes our collection and now we can continue on with our Harry Potter marathon), and a guitar strap for Caleb.  The guitar strap was missing.  :-(  Although if there was to be anything missing I would prefer for it to be that!  I've been looking forward to both of the other items for several weeks now.  I'm rather disappointed in amazon, but they are supposed to be getting us a refund.

Thursday
I tried really hard to have a productive day.  I get tired so easily but I feel like a loofa if I just lay on the couch.  I'd tell you what all I got accomplished, but you probably really don't care.  Just normal housekeeping things. The baby's room is now almost put back together again after the last shower. 

We also had another movie night.  We are now half way done with our Harry Potter marathon.  It's just one of the many things to accomplish on our "to-do-before-baby" list.  Some things on that list are necessary, others aren't.

Friday
Friday morning I woke up wanting pancakes, which is a common occurrence.  This morning I decided to use my smiley face pancake griddle.  I don't use it often because the pancakes are hard to flip and it's taken me awhile to master making pancakes on a regular griddle.  This little pancake sums up how my experience went.  This face somehow came off of a griddle that only has SMILEY faces on it.  I did manage to get some edible ones off of there though.

So I've decided that I'm going to try my hardest to breastfeed.  I threw around the idea for awhile and decided many times that I didn't want to do it.  After doing some research I think it's not going to be as scary as I originally thought and between the health benefits and cost savings, I feel like it's going to be a good thing.  I know it's not easy when starting out, but I've already started praying that it will be as easy as possible for both me and the baby to get the hang of because I know how cranky I get when I don't get much sleep or when my hormones are all out of whack.  Mix both of those together and I just might be a monster after this baby is born.  If something happens where it doesn't work out for either one of us to nurse, then I'll bottlefeed and not feel bad about it.  I don't feel like I'll be a horrible mother if I don't breastfeed but I feel like it's an effort I should at least put forth. 

Why did I bring all of that up?  Well during my reading, I read that when breastfeeding you get hungry a lot and need healthy snacks to eat.  I had several ripe bananas that needed something to be done with them, so I set out to make some banana muffins to have on hand after the baby is born.  I ended up with 4 1/2 dozen muffins and while I was at it I made some zucchini bread for Caleb.  I froze all of the muffins so I can pull them out as I need them.  I have regular banana, banana chocolate chip, banana blueberry, and some chocolate chocolate chip muffins (not as healthy but just for when I get the craving for them.)  :-)  That pretty much took up all energy I had for the day.

Mmmmm....blueberries!

I'm hoping to find some more healthy snacks that I can have on hand for after the baby is born.  I'm open to suggestions.  :-)

Saturday
I wanted to go to Mexico today to get several things done.  One of them was to go to a medical supply store to get a breast pump that my insurance is paying for, which happened to be closed today.  Then I wanted to go to Wal-Mart to get a baby swing, and they didn't have the one I wanted or any that fitted our specifications and in our price range.  Then I wanted to go to the pet store and get some fish for Oscar since he's gobbled up most of his friends, and of course they were out of feeder fish.  I may be a Smith by name, but I've still got Haley blood in me. 

Maybe this time next week I'll be telling you all about our new little baby.  I wouldn't count on it though.  Just some wishful thinking.  :-)

Week of July 14

Week 35
Oh my the hiccups.  He's been getting them at least once every day and one day I counted 4 times in one day.  It's cute if they only last for a few minutes, but the times where it lasts for almost 30 minutes I start to get sick to my stomach. 

Sunday
We had my Sunday school class over for a bbq that afternoon.  I thought we had a big house until there were that many people squeezed inside.  It suddenly felt tiny.  We both really enjoyed having everyone over and hope to have lots more opportunities to host fellowships like that.

Monday
We had a hard time getting up on Monday.  It's kind of one of Caleb's off days since he doesn't have office hours and since we had a long weekend we both slept in.  We were planning on going to St Louis but decided to wait until Tuesday to do that since we got such a late start to our day.  We both spent the rest of the day enjoying some time to do whatever we felt like doing.  (I'm sure we may not have many more of those lazy days in the coming weeks)

Tuesday
We got up a little bit earlier and made it to St Louis at a decent time.  :-)  We went to Ranken Jordan hospital in St. Louis to visit a guy from our church who was doing some therapy there.  We sat and visited with his family members that were there and took a bit of a tour of the hospital.  If you aren't familiar with it, it's a pediatric specialty rehab hospital and it is a really neat place.  It's nowhere near a depressing hospital setting and they make the kids feel very confident in their ability to get better, and it works!  We got to meet some kids with some amazing stories that really make you take a step back and stand in awe at what God can do.

Wednesday
After our trip to St Louis I was pretty tired on Wednesday.  It doesn't take much to wear me out anymore!  I spent most of the day being a loofa on the couch and taking a nap.  Although I wasn't totally unproductive, I worked on building a baby.

Thursday
I don't remember Thursday ever happening.  I'm sure it did though.

Friday
I got up and was productive!  Yeah!  I made some more chocolate chocolate chip muffins, got some laundry done, got our bag packed for St. Louis, and got some yogurt finished up.  We headed to St Louis around lunch time and got to spend the evening with my family!  My ant (not to be confused with an aunt.  Ants are cooler.) and cousin came into town from Kansas and we went with them and my mom to JCPenney to get some bargains.  My mom's employee discount was higher this weekend along with other sales they had going on so we were able to score some awesome deals. 

Saturday
My mom and sister threw me a big shower.  It was so good to get to see so many people!  We don't get to make it to Fenton very often, especially to my parents' church so I don't get to see many of the people that I've known for so many years there.  Also some of my college friends were there.  I felt so blessed to know that so many people cared to show up and spend their afternoon at the shower.  It was an open-house so people were able to come and go all afternoon.  I got some really nice things and now I get the fun of going out and spending the rest of my gift cards on everything else that we still need so we can be as prepared as we're going to be.  :-)  (Who wants to go shopping???)

A turtle watermelon!

Turtle Diaper Cake

This boy.  I love him a lot.

We came home Saturday night to a turtle with a burned out heat lamp and a couple of missing fish.  Sounds like things got a little out of hand while we were gone.

So I'm sure you are wondering if I have any bug stories.  I do.  Just one.  I keep my hair dryer on the floor in the bathroom next to the bathroom sink.  I picked up my hair dryer and turned it on when I thought I saw a fly on it.   Since our Sunday school fellowship, we had a ton of flies get in the house that day and my sister and I missed a couple.  We did manage to kill 20 of them that day, but I thought maybe there was one on my hair dryer.  NOPE.  It was a big ol nasty spider leg hanging out the front grate thing.  Fortunately it was already dead. I took my hair dryer into Caleb and he tried to pull it out but it ended up falling back into the hair dryer.  I was able to get it out with a toothpick but it was just the body.  I'm not totally sure where the legs are.  I made sure to point my hair dryer over the sink for a little bit before aiming it at my head, but no legs were found.  I think Caleb got the big one sticking out, but that still leaves 7 unaccounted for.

Week of July 7

I have officially had an update on every week for the past year.  Some weeks may have been combined into one post, but still.  I've made it a whole year.  I should make a cake or something. I'm always looking for reasons to make something sweet and chocolatey.

Week 34 - baby is good.  No real big update.

Sunday
The ladies at our new church had a shower for our baby and it was so cute!  They had a bookworm theme and had people bring books for the baby.  He certainly has quite the collection going already, although I would expect no less seeing how many books his daddy has.  :-)  The shower was so much fun and I'm overwhelmed by everyone's generosity.

The sweater vest I'm most anxious for him to wear.

Monday
I got what I thought were all of the baby's clothes washed so I could get them sorted by size, and once the second large load was in the washer, I found another gift bag with clothes in them.  Once my kid gets to be about 6 months old I think he's going to have plenty to wear. I got so excited matching up his little socks, they are so tiny and cute!  Between doing that and getting his crib completely put together with bedding and everything, I'm getting so ready for him to be here. 

The pile of clothes to be sorted.

Monday afternoon Caleb left with someone from the church to go to the executive board meetings for the Missouri Baptist Convention.  This left me home alone.  I was going to go to St Louis to stay at my parents, but we decided it might be better for me to just stay here.  I got used to sleeping alone at night whenever Caleb worked at UPS, but after my incident of thinking that someone was in our apartment, I'm more leery now to stay by myself.  We also live in a much bigger house now and I'm not totally used to all of the sounds that this old house makes in the night.  It also doesn't help that I've been watching these real-life murder mystery shows and the show I'm currently watching is about small-town murders.  I decided to quit watching them a few days before Caleb left so I wouldn't be as freaked out.  So Monday evening I was talking to my sister on the phone and I saw a silhouette of someone on the front porch through the sheers on our window.  I'm not sure if the person knocked or not, with the way our front door is, it's hard to hear when someone knocks and our air conditioner is loud when it's running.  I decided to just quit talking to my sister and wait for this person to leave.  It didn't take too long and I thought it might have been our landlord but there was no way I was going to the front door to find out.  There's only so much Oscar can do to protect me. 

Tuesday
So I'm awoken around 7:45 by the sound of someone putting a ladder outside my bedroom window and climbing up it!!  I was so tired and wanted to ignore it thinking that I was just hearing things, but then I hear loud voices and knew that there was definitely someone on a ladder outside my bedroom window!  I peeked out the window and there was a truck pulled in right next to the house and a guy out there.  I cautiously went to the front door and found a note that the landlord left the night before saying that there would be roofers coming by in the morning to work on the roof.  Of course they had to start working on the part of the roof that is right above our bedroom first.  On the one morning that Caleb's not here.  At 7:45 in the morning.

Wednesday
I had my 34 week appointment.  Pretty much they just weighed and measured me and told me everything looked good.  At my next appointment the doctor will make sure the baby is head down and can give me an estimate of how much he weighs. 

Since we were in Columbia, of course I had to go to Target.  They are having a baby sale this week and the stroller/carseat combo that I registered for was on sale, $30 off.  Since we had been given several gift cards at our earlier showers, I went ahead and got the stroller.  I can't wait to have a little punkin to put in it.

I also love being able to score deals like this:  Four 16 oz bottles of dial for men body wash originally $3.99 each and I scored them for $.74 each.  Yep.  That's how I shop.  And I have a good smelling husband.  It's a win win.

Thursday
I whipped up a new skirt.  Last week when we were at Walmart I went to the fabric department and found some fabric that was originally $9/yard and it was on sale for $1/yd.  I bought all that they had, which was only 1 3/4 yards.  It's white so it was slightly see-through, so I used some dark blue fabric my mom had on hand and made it two layers.  I also made it so that it will be easy to make smaller whenever I'm not fat pregnant anymore.  It will also be nice to have another elastic-waisted skirt for when I'm in the in between stage of maternity and regular clothes after pregnancy.

Not bad for a total spent of $1.75, eh?

Friday
Caleb's office is upstairs and it can get pretty humid up there since we don't have central air up there, and he didn't want to keep his guitars in the humidity.  He took one to church to keep in his office and then he managed to make a hook thing to hang this one from in our living room using some more cedar wood.  Never underestimate what he can build with cedar wood.

Saturday
We had our child birth class at the hospital.  I thinking I'm dreading the birth more now that I was before the class.  But it's good to know more about what to expect and hopefully I'll still have a few weeks to get my mind wrapped around some of that.  I still am really excited to snuggle that little baby and play dress up. 

Week of June 30

Week 33 - I'm rotund. 

Sunday
My friend Darren from St. Louis came to church for a surprise visit!  It was great to see him.  Then Sunday evening Caleb's aunt and uncle from Mexico that we stayed with when we first moved here surprised us with a visit.  We are blessed.

Monday
My morning started off slow.  I just couldn't seem to wake up, so what better thing to do than to go back to sleep.  :-) I did help Caleb out with one of his projects.  When he bought a bar for my clothes closet, he had just enough bar left over that would fit in between the kitchens cabinets over the sink.  He hung the bar and added hooks to it so we can hang our pots/skillets from it.  It turned out really nice!  I wrapped the bar in fabric so it was prettier than just metal, and so that the sides of the bar don't scratch our kitchen cabinets.  Since Caleb asked me to wrap it, I let him pick out the fabric that I used to wrap it in, despite him (jokingly) telling someone the other day that I hoard pointless things like fabric scraps.  :-) 

Later Monday afternoon I started painting the baby dresser (the one that Caleb rebuilt from it's tragic fall).  I finally decided on how I wanted to make it turtley and happened to have most of the color paints I wanted already.  I ended up staying out on the porch until almost 11 pm that night painting.  Centralia seems to be a hopping place that time of night. 

Tuesday
Tuesday morning I got one side of the dresser finished!  I also started painting the drawers.

Tuesday afternoon I got to go to Target!  I must say, I don't like not living really close to a Target.  I NEED Target.  :-)  Target is really the only place that I like to coupon, especially now that you can triple stack coupons. 

Wednesday
My first best friend, Nikki, came to visit me.  She and I became friends in Kindergarten and were best friends all through elementary school.  We were in the same class every year except for 5th grade.  We still stayed friends all through the rest of school and then even both worked at Target together during high school. She flew out to Germany on Friday to study abroad and I'm glad I got to see her before she left.  :-)

Thursday
Happy Independence Day!  We went to a get together with some people from church.  We had a lot of fun getting to hang out with them and enjoy the afternoon. 

Thursday evening we went to see the fireworks in Centralia.  It was certainly one of the smallest big firework display I've ever seen, but for as small of a town as Centralia is I was impressed with them. 

After we got home that evening....oh my goodness.  Just when I think our bugs couldn't get worse.   Well, I take that back.  We don't have any sort of bug infestation problem, I just don't like bugs and so when there is a bug in our house I tend to get dramatic over it.  Ok, so I was getting a snack and about to head out of the kitchen and into the living room when all of a sudden I see these big brown spider legs flailing about.  I look over and there was an empty mason jar sitting on the countertop next to the fridge (because one of these days I WILL get my yeast starter going again, so have the jar there to remind me about it) and there was a huge spider in it.  Without thinking I yelled out "OH CALEB!!" not knowing that he was in the living room on the phone and I hear him say "Hold on, Melissa just found a bug" (He knows me well).   I told him at least it had trapped itself in this mason jar since it couldn't climb up the sides of it, but still, I'm not taking the chance of that thing attacking me when I try to dispose of it.  He took a good look at it for a few minutes and then flushed it down the toilet.  Later on he was looking at spider sprays on the internet and he came across a spider fogger.  I told him I didn't want to go to that much trouble because of having to protect all of our food and counter tops and my turtle.  I also said that if we had brown recluse spiders that might be a different story.  Then by the look in his eye and his "Well..." I knew at that moment that the spider had been a brown recluse.  I googled them and sure enough.  I would love to find out that I'm wrong about this one as well.  Take a look at this monster for yourself.

 

 

Does it give you the shivers like it does me every time I see these pictures??

Friday
While Caleb was painting the crib, I was able to finally get the dresser finished.  I'm pretty excited about it. 

Here's the front and the other side:

And to think that just a few weeks ago the dresser looked like this (minus the drawers) and my mom told me I could just trash it:

Saturday
I started off the morning making some blueberry cheesecake muffins with some of the fresh blueberries we bought last week.  They are pretty good, but they kind of all spilled over in the oven and so I pulled them out to keep them from dripping anymore and it turns out that most of them weren't completely done.  At least a few seconds in the microwave will fix that.  Anyway, next time I think I'll just make plain blueberry muffins.

Later that morning we headed up to Caleb's parents' house.  Caleb got some wood to *hopefully* start making us a queen size bed soon.  That afternoon we went to Caleb's grandma's house and his aunt and uncle's antique/firework store.  They bbqed some hotdogs and hamburgers and lit off some fireworks. 

Here are some of the lanterns they lit.  I've never seen these in real life so it was neat!

It ended up being a late night for us.  On the way from Caleb's grandma's back to his parents, we were riding with his family and came across a deer in the middle of the road that probably saw it's life flash before its eyes, but it ran away with a few seconds to spare. Then we headed from Caleb's parents back to Centralia.  I really wanted to fall asleep but after the deer thing, I was a little nervous to fall asleep  (I'm a worrisome mother already.)  We came across a couple of raccoons in the road that were smart enough to get out of the way in time before they became a vulture's dinner, but a skunk and good sized opossum didn't quite have the same luck.  (thump thump)  If you see our van in the next couple of days, I would be weary about getting too close, it stinks a bit like skunk. 

Week of June 23

Week 32 - baby is doing good!  He's still sideways and I feel like he's starting to run out of room that way.  When he stretches out it hurts and I have to keep pushing his feet back in after awhile.  He also seems to hate whenever I lay on my left side, because that's where his head is, but yet if I lay on my right side he digs his feet around my ribs.  I can't win.

Sunday
Sunday was the first baptism Caleb had the privilege of doing at our church.  Since our church doesn't have a baptistery we went to a church down the road who lets us borrow theirs.  Unfortunately, the water was freezing cold.  Still, it was a wonderful time to celebrate.  :-)

My parents and sister also came into town for the day :-)

Monday
We went to visit Caleb's parents on Monday.  He needed to get his car inspected and license plates renewed.  He got his license plates renewed just a couple of days before we moved to Indiana and so they are just now expiring.  I don't know about you, but I think that's perfect timing.  I'm not totally sure if we ever needed to get Indiana plates since Caleb was a student and that was the sole reason we were living there....but if we did, shhhhhhh.  What's past is past. 

While we were there, Caleb's mom was going through some of the kids' homeschool papers from way back when.  She showed me some of it and then sent some home with Caleb to look through.  I got quite a chuckle out of some of it.  Caleb really liked to write stories and to draw when he was little. 
He had a journal entry that looks like the writing topic was about if he could live anywhere, where would he live and what would his house be like.  Well, I'm going to skip over the part where he would be living on a mountain and there would be snow on the ground for 7 months out of the year and get to the end part where it says:

SEE?  Oscar is the pet he always wanted, he just may not admit it today.  But 11 year old Caleb admits it.

Here's a drawing for you.  But be quiet!  He's sleeping!

Tuesday
I had the joy of getting to go shopping with some sweet dear ladies from my church.  We went to Target and went baby shopping!  It was so much fun to get to spend time with them and to pick out stuff for our wee one.

Wednesday
Caleb mentioned a strawberry pie to someone in a conversation the other day and that got a hankering started in me.  I think I've only had it one time, but it sounded so good.  I had just bought some fresh strawberries a few days before so I put them to use and made a pie.  It turned out delicious.  The best part is that there isn't a whole lot of added sugar so I don't need to feel bad for eating two pieces a day, right?  I mean, it's mostly fruit and fruit is good for you.

This is how Caleb feels about strawberry pie

Thursday
I finally got all of the paperwork together that I needed for health insurance stuff to get it finalized.  And now my health insurance has changed and is probably changing again next week.  I hope my doctor's office can keep everything straight, because I surely can't.  Between all of my insurance and address changes, they probably groan every time they see me walk in the door.

Friday
I had another hankering Friday morning and that was for chocolate chocolate chip muffins.  I made half of a batch (so they would fit in our toaster oven and I don't have to heat up the big oven) and boy howdy were they good and certainly didn't last long.  (Have you ever read the book "If you give a Moose a Muffin?  I could have been on the cover of that book on Friday.)

Friday morning was my 32 week check up at the doctor's office.  I'm still measuring two weeks behind but since that's been consistent for my pregnancy they aren't worried about it.  I've also gained a whopping 30 pounds  (Yikes!) but my doctor assured me I'm right on track on where I need to be.

After the doctor's appointment since we were in Columbia anyway, we went shopping.  We went to Home Depot and I got basil!  I love growing basil but didn't grow it from seeds since we were moving.  I got to plant them in some pretty pots that I got on clearance at Target.

We also went to Aldi and might have gone crazy on their fresh produce.  How can you not buy 6 bunches of bananas when they are $.29/lb?  I ended up with 39 bananas for around $4.  It's probably people like me who are the reason that they put a limit on the number of strawberries you can buy. I just might have bought them out if there wasn't a limit of 2 per customer.  Our freezer is now stocked with lots of yummy bananas, strawberries, blueberries, and mulberries all ready for some smoothies!

Also, when we were out garage sale-ing a few weeks ago, Caleb found a ceiling fan for $5.  Since our bedroom had a chandelier instead of a ceiling fan, this fat girl was all for it.  At first I thought the ceiling fan had a light with it because that's what was on the box.  Well that box was actually for their new ceiling fan.  So Caleb got to try to piece this ceiling fan together without knowing what it was supposed to look like, which wouldn't be too terribly difficult except the people happened to leave parts to their new ceiling fan in the box too.  And they forgot to include the screws.  Fortunately there's a hardware store within walking distance from our house and Caleb was able to get everything he needed. 

Saturday
Caleb bought some shelves to put up in our laundry closet.  I finally have a place to put laundry baskets with clothes instead of making piles on the floor.  He still might add a couple more shelves on the side. 

Remember the cockroach?  Well another lady from church informed us that it was probably just a water bug since we haven't seen any more of them.  I googled them and it looked fairly similar, but I also pretty much get the same picture results googling a cockroach.  Caleb went on an assassination mission with some bug spray all around our house and another one of those nasty bugs came out of hiding and died on our living room floor.  This is when I wish we didn't have brown carpet.  At least Caleb found it before I stepped on it.

That's all.  :-)